The story of our club, decade by decade
1978-1989
Formed in 1978 by a group of members of Viking Youth Centre, the club was originally named 'Vikings' and began playing in the Gloucester & District Sunday League Division 6.
In 1983 the club joined the grassroots Football pyramid, entering into the Stroud and District Football League Division 4. At this time they played both Saturday and Sunday football. In 1986 the club amassed 5 trophies across Saturday and Sunday football and gained promotion to Stroud and District Football League Division 1, having 3 successive back to back promotions.
In 1987 the Sunday league side was promoted to the Sunday League Premier division.
The newly created Reserve side Stroud and District Football League Division 6 in 1988.
In 1989 the club won Stroud and District Football League Division 1 and gained promotion to Gloucestershire Northern Senior League Division 2 for the first time.
The late 1980s saw the cessation of the club participating in Sunday League as they focussed their efforts on Saturday football.
Crest and colours
The original Barnwood United club crest was created by Tony Brown. As a lifelong Aston Villa fan, Brown chose claret & blue with gold trim. Key elements of the original club crest include:
Trees representing woods.
An owl which is intended to represent a barn owl so that, together with the woods, this signifies Barnwood (Barn [owl] - wood). However the image depicts an owl with pointy ears, which a barn owl does not have.
A football to represent the nature of the club.
A Viking helmet in honour of the Clubs prior name.
The crest also adorns an established ('EST.') date. Images don't provide total clarity of the year it represents. Vikings was founded in 1978 and the date the club name changed to Barnwood United was at some point between 1995 and 2000.
In 2020 the club sanctioned a revamp of the badge, in order to modernise it and make available high quality resolution images. The new badge deliberately remained recognisable to the original. Notable alterations included:
A simplified colour palette; removal of the gold outline around the trees, a change of the football to be gold outline with no trim, a change of the text from black to gold, use of only gold in the owl. This reduced the number of colours from 7 (claret, blue, gold, green, beige, white, black) down to just 4 (claret, blue, gold, green).
The pointy owl ears became less prominent to be more identifiable as a barn owl.
Club crest early 2000s
